Towards a European Education Area by 2025

The European Commission set out Tuesday its vision for creating a 'European Education Area' by 2025, as part of its various ideas for the future of Europe initiated by the UK's Brexit referendum vote.

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The ideas formulated are intended as a contribution to the EU Leaders'
meeting on 17 November 2017 in Gothenburg, where they will discuss the
future of education and culture. The Commission believes that it is in
the shared interest of all Member States to harness the full potential
of education and culture as drivers for job creation, economic growth
and social fairness as well as a means to experience European identity
in all its diversity.

Meeting in Rome in March 2017, Europe's leaders committed to creating a "Union where young people receive the best education and training and can study and find jobs across the continent."
The Commission believes that education and culture can be an important
part of the solution in tackling the challenges of an ageing workforce,
continued digitalisation, future needs for skills, the need to promote
critical thinking and media literacy in an era where "alternative facts"
and disinformation can proliferate online, as well as the need to
foster a greater sense of belonging in face of populism and xenophobia.

A European Area of Education should include:

Making mobility a reality for all:
by building on the positive experiences of the Erasmus+ programme and
the European Solidarity Corps and expanding participation in them as
well as by creating an EU Student Card to offer a new user-friendly way to store information on a person's academic records;

The mutual recognition of diplomas: by initiating a new 'Sorbonne process',
building on the "Bologna process", to prepare the ground for the mutual
recognition of higher education and school leaving diplomas;

Improving language learning: by setting a new benchmark for
all young Europeans finishing upper secondary education to have a good
knowledge of two languages in addition to their mother tongue(s) by
2025;

Promoting lifelong learning:
by seeking convergence and increasing the share of people engaging in
learning throughout their lives with the aim of reaching 25% by 2025;

Supporting teachers:
by multiplying the number of teachers participating in the Erasmus+
programme and eTwinning network and offering policy guidance on the
professional development of teachers and school leaders;

Investing in education: by using the European Semester to support structural reforms to improve education policy, using EU funding and EU investment instruments to fund education and setting a benchmark for Member States to invest 5% of GDP in education.

Preserving cultural heritage and fostering a sense of a European identity and culture: by developing – using the momentum of the 2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage – a European Agenda for Culture and preparing a Council Recommendation on common values, inclusive education and the European dimension of teaching.

Strengthening the European dimension of Euronews,
which was created in 1993 by a number of European public broadcasters,
with the ambition of having a European channel offering access to
independent, high quality information with a pan-European perspective.

Background

The primary responsibility for education and culture
policies lies with the Member States, at national, regional and local
levels. However, the European Union has played an important
complementary role over the years. This is particularly true when it
comes to cross-border activities. For instance, after 30 years in
operation, the Erasmus programme (Erasmus+ since 2014) has enabled 9
million people to study, train, teach, or volunteer in another country.

Over the past decade, the European Union has also
developed a series of 'soft policy' tools to help Member States in the
design of national education policies. Since 2000, Member States have
been cooperating under the 'Framework for European cooperation in
education and training' which set common objectives and benchmarks.

In 2010, the EU set itself two education targets
under the Europe 2020 Strategy where real progress has already been
attained. Early school leaving has been reduced from 13.9% in 2010 to
10.7% in 2016, with the target to reach 10% by 2020. And tertiary
educational attainment is up to 39.1% in 2016 from 34% in 2010, with the
target of 40% by 2020.

The Commission believes it is now time to build on these foundations and greatly step up our ambition.

To steer this reform and to stimulate discussion as
Europe looks to its future, President Juncker proposed in his State of
the Union Address of 13 September 2017 a Roadmap for a More United, Stronger and More Democratic Union.
The meeting in Gothenburg on 17 November 2017 will be the opportunity
for leaders to discuss the strengthening of European identity through
education and culture.